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Pregnancy and progesterone treatment of ovariectomized rats decrease glucose metabolism through the pentose-phosphate pathway in isolated female rat adipocytes. As demonstrated in previous studies, progesterone directly decreases [1-¹⁴C]glucose oxidation through the pentose-phosphate pathway and lipogenesis from [6-¹⁴C]glucose; the present study therefore compared glucose-induced lipid synthesis during pregnancy (10, 16 and 20 days of pregnancy) with the effect of progesterone treatment (5 mg/rat per day for 14 days) to shed more light on the role of this steroid in glucose metabolism during pregnancy. The inhibition of [6-¹⁴C]glucose incorporation into triacylglycerols in the progesterone-treated rats was comparable to that which occurs during late (20 days) and mid-pregnancy (16 days) but not during early pregnancy (10 days). The inhibition of fatty acid synthesis was more important as pregnancy advanced and was different from the decrease in fatty acid synthesis induced by progesterone treatment. The sensitivity to insulin was comparable in virgin, ovariectomized and progesterone-treated ovariectomized rats but not in pregnant rats. This implies that progesterone and insulin affect glucose-induced lipid synthesis by distinct processes and that the impaired glucose metabolism is characterized by a reduction in basal glucose utilization rather than by an impaired insulin response.